Tiana Markova-Gold with Sarah Dohrmann

Scènes et Types
A Conversation Held in Conjunction with the Concurrent CCNY Exhibition

Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 7–9pm
Free admission. Seating is limited.

As part of the CCNY Conversation Series, photographer Tiana Markova-Gold and writer Sarah Dohrmann will present their long-term collaborative project, Scènes et Types, about women and prostitution in Morocco. The presentation will include a reading and slideshow followed by a Q&A session with the artists. The event will be co-sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), which awarded Markova-Gold an artist fellowship in photography in 2010, and Dohrmann a fellowship in the category of nonfiction literature in 2009. In 2010, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University awarded the twentieth Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize to photographer Tiana Markova-Gold and writer Sarah Dohrmann to produce their project, Scènes et Types, about prostitution and the marginalization of women in Morocco. The pair spent three and a half months in the spring of 2011 in Morocco, documenting the lives of sex workers to explore the complex nature of the choices Moroccan women face. They approached the project with the express intent to “dismantle preconceived notions of the prostitute as sexual deviant,” an idea that Markova-Gold has explored in earlier projects on her own in the United States and Macedonia. Dohrmann had previously lived in Morocco on a Fulbright fellowship, where she learned Moroccan Arabic and began to write about her associations and friendships with female Moroccan sex workers, and to interview various Moroccan stakeholders on the question of women and sexuality in Morocco. Their method is collaborative and unconventional, pairing Markova-Gold’s photographs and collages with Dohrmann’s literary narrative style.

About Tiana Markova-Gold & Sarah Dohrmann

Tiana Markova-Gold is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received a NY Times Scholarship to attend the full-time Photojournalism Program at the International Center of Photography in 2006-07. She has traveled extensively, documenting social issues with a particular focus on women and girls. Tiana’s photographs have been recognized in numerous photography contests and have been included in exhibitions at Sasha Wolf gallery, Exit Art and HOST gallery in London, England among others. Her work has been featured at international photo festivals including NY Photo Festival, Lumix Festival of Young Photojournalism in Hannover, Germany, LagosPhoto in Lagos, Nigeria and GuatePhoto in Guatemala City. Since the spring of 2007, Tiana has been working on an in-depth project about the lives of women in prostitution. This project has included work in the United States, Macedonia, and Morocco. Her work has earned her several fellowships and grants including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography and the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for her on-going collaboration with writer Sarah Dohrmann about prostitution and the marginalization of women in Morocco. Her website is www.tianamarkovagold.com

Sarah Dohrmann is a fiction and nonfiction writer who lived in Morocco for 15 months during 2007 and 2008 on a Fulbright Fellowship of the Arts for Creative Writing, which is when she began to spend time with Moroccan women in prostitution. Sarah returned to Morocco with Tiana Markova-Gold as co-recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. She has also received a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a 2010 Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, TIME LightBox, Teachers & Writers Magazine, and Joyland Magazine, among others. You can read more of her work on her blog Und You Vill Like It.